Caring Senior Service National HQ Blog

Life After Discharge: Home Health vs Home Care

Hospital stays are becoming shorter. Surgical procedures have a pre-determined length of stay attached to them that insurance companies look at closely. Unfortunately, this can sometimes result in a patient feeling as though they've been discharged too early. Though they appear on paper to have met the criteria for discharge from the hospital's level of care, they may feel unprepared for a return to the home setting and run the risk of readmission. Life after discharge can be stressful for seniors and their family. To make things easier, can home health and home care work together?

In fact, upon discharge, patients often feel like they are “kicked out” too soon from hospital care, according to Meredith Scafiezzo, MSW, social worker at Riverside Home Health Care.

After discharge there are many duties, such as caring for their wounds, managing medications, safely traversing the home to use the restroom and return to bed can be overwhelming, and this is in addition to managing a diet to facilitate healing, trips to the store, dealing with pain, drowsiness, and potential side effects from new medications.

This is where home health and private duty can team up and step in. With effective interception prior to discharge from the hospital, home health and private duty care can be coordinated to bridge the gap. Private duty caregivers can visit on days opposite of home health aides and help with such duties as bathing, transportation and errands, and other non-medical services.

Private duty care agencies can approach home care agencies with the intention to team up and synergistically deliver care in a way that benefits everyone. By joining efforts, home health care agencies and private duty can intervene prior to discharge with patient-centered goals to ease patients seamlessly into care at home. This communication and merging of skillsets and services can dramatically change the transition from hospital to home, empowering patients and reducing hospital readmissions.

Caring Senior Service has the experience, compassion, and training necessary for comprehensive home care, and we also offer a wide range of home care services that are all designed to make life easier for seniors and their families. To learn more about the services we provide, contact us today!